


Rule of Three

by Vamillepudding



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Color Blind Ben Solo, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Pregnant Rey (Star Wars), Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:54:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22338862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vamillepudding/pseuds/Vamillepudding
Summary: Rey keeps losing her breakfast, her taste buds seem to have changed overnight, and her mood swings have intensified. It takes a while to connect the dots, but when she does, there's only one thing left to do: figure out how to tell Ben that she's expecting.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Poe Dameron & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 13
Kudos: 413





	Rule of Three

**Author's Note:**

> I got this idea stuck in my head a few weeks ago and I couldn't not write it, so, here we are. A huge thanks to [captain_maatkara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/captain_maatkara) and [Cynassa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynassa) who begged me not to write this and then helped a lot when I wrote it anyway.

In the three years of them living together, Rey has gotten food poisoning no less than eleven times. It’s become practically routine at this point: wake up, run to the bathroom, stay there vomiting until Ben notices, and then have Ben stroke her back and hold her hair back while she vomits some more. The whole thing usually takes about 24 hours, which means they both take time off work, and if it wasn’t so gross, these impromptu holidays would almost be nice – although, of course, it’s taken Rey some time to arrive at that conclusion. 

“I think he’s trying to poison me,” Rey had confided to Rose one night after food poisoning number 3. “This can’t be a coincidence.” 

“Maybe Ben is just a really bad cook,” Rose had said, and it would have been a sensible thing to point out, if not for the evidence to the contrary. Ben isn’t a really bad cook. Ben is an excellent cook. If Rey was getting sick from his meals, then there must be _intention_ behind it. 

It had taken another three rodeos on the vomit bull for Rey to catch on, and only with the help of Poe. He had listened to Rey’s increasingly crazier conspiracy theories on why Ben would want her dead and why he couldn’t just break up with her like a normal person, and responded with a single question: 

“All these meals – was there meat in them?” 

Rey, trying to remember all the sickness-inducing dinners Ben had cooked for her, had eventually affirmed. “Yes, every time. Oh my god, is it because he’s a vegetarian? Is he making a statement?” Every once in a while, Ben cooks something with meat for her. It’s the gesture that counts more than anything – Rey is more than capable of cooking her own food if she craves a divergence from their usual vegetarian cuisine, and some days they end up preparing two separate meals for that exact reason. But when Ben makes steak just for her, there’s something sweet about it, like he’s willing to put her happiness above his own morals. 

Unless, of course, he’s secretly putting cyanide in it or something. 

“If he was,” Poe had said, “he’d be playing the long game. Have you met him? Ben doesn’t have the patience for that.” 

“He’d just strike you dead,” Finn had agreed, way too casual for discussing her boyfriend’s potential for murder. 

“Ben is _very_ patient,” Rey protested, unsure of how she’d found herself in a position of defending Ben’s ability to properly kill someone, but unable to stop herself. “He _is_. Stop laughing.” 

Finn and Poe had not stopped laughing. Poe had, however, managed to get out between fits of laughter, “He’s not poisoning you. Or, well, he is, but not on purpose. He’s colour-blind.” 

That was about two years ago. Since then, Rey has learned a great many new things, like that Ben doesn’t actually like unripe bananas, he just can’t tell the difference by looking at them. Or that he has trouble with traffic lights when it’s dark outside. Or that this is _not_ the reason he wears black all the time. (“I just like black,” Ben had said defensively.) 

Or that he can’t really cook meat, because he can never tell if it’s still raw inside or not. 

Rey had taken over the majority of the meat-preparing since that revelation, and besides, it’s not like they ever eat that much meat anyway. But _sometimes_. 

Sometimes, Ben will cook a meat-based dish for her anyway. Ninety per cent of these cases, all is well. 

The other ten per cent leave Rey hanging over the toilet like she is now. 

_I have to put a stop to this_ , she thinks, not for the first time, and leans her head against the cold porcelain. She _would_ have put a stop to this, would have done it two years ago, if not for the hurt look in his eyes when she first broached the topic. So Rey, strong-minded in all areas of life except one, had caved. _It’s only a little food poisoning every few months_ , she’d told herself. _It’s not like he’s actually killing me_. 

It sure feels like it right now, though. 

The door opens and Ben comes inside, immediately kneeling down beside her. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he mutters. Closing her eyes, Rey nods. She’s exhausted, and she also feels a little like crying, which has _never_ happened before. 

“Water,” she rasps, and Ben immediately disappears to oblige. He places a glass on the floor beside her some time later and sits back down. Their bathroom is too small for two people sitting on the floor, even when one of them is bowed over the toilet, so he has to draw his knees up to his chest. Probably the bathroom _would_ be big enough, Rey reflects, if Ben didn’t take up twice the space a normal human being needs. 

“We’re out of crackers,” Ben says, “but I’ll run to the store to get some. Anything else?” Most of all Rey wants to tell him to go away and leave her to die in peace, but he sounds so guilty that she feels bad. Which is clearly ridiculous. 

It’s also ridiculous that despite feeling like absolute hell, she still wants _Ben_ to feel better. Either this is what love is like, or Rey has lost her mind. Whatever it is, though, she still ends up telling Ben, “Gatorade. And if you want to make me broth or something later, you can.” 

He nods, kisses her sweaty forehead because somehow her varying states of grossness in these situations have never bothered him, and is gone, leaving Rey to her still-upset stomach and her thoughts. 

Ben always likes to be needed, but Rey isn’t great at asking for things. Requests have never been simple for her, so the mere fact that she’s now comfortable enough to ask Ben to make broth already says a lot. Somehow, the knowledge that Ben would try to fulfil insane demands just as much as he will try his best to make broth today makes the whole thing worse, because this way, Rey can never tell if she’s being reasonable. 

She’ll figure it out, though. They both will. And maybe one day she’ll be able to tell Ben to his face that if he never attempts to make her a steak again, she’ll live happily and, more importantly, significantly longer. 

Or not. After all, what’s a little bit of nausea a few times a year?

***

It’s not a few times a year. It happens again the very next day. This time she can’t put the blame on Ben, because she didn’t even see Ben yesterday evening – after her stomach had settled for good, they had spent the better part of their Saturday watching Lord of the Rings, and eventually Rey had felt well enough to still go over to the party at Finn and Poe’s place as planned, something that has never happened before in her history with food poisoning. 

Ben hadn’t accompanied her. It took him about three months to adjust to Rey after Poe had introduced them, maybe four months to adjust to Rose, and after four years, he _still_ greets Finn with a handshake. (Once, memorably, Finn, in true Poe-manner, attempted a fist bump. Once.) Any outings with more than, say, five people fall under his definition of Not Fun, and any parties fall under his definition of Torture. 

Rey likes parties, though, likes to be part of a crowd, likes the lull of dozens of drunk conversations taking place around her simultaneously, likes to beat other guests at beer pong, likes to dance. She also likes to be around Ben, though, so they’ve made a deal: he is allowed to skip out on these outings, but he has to buy her ice cream the next day to make up for it. 

Originally she hadn’t planned to stay long yesterday, but one round of karaoke had turned into two had turned into five, and at some point all the remaining guests had gathered on Poe and Finn’s tiny balcony to watch the sun rise in a sort of drunken, awed haze. Now, a few hours later, Rey wakes on their couch, her neck aching, and bile already rising in her throat. 

“You too?” Finn groans from the bathtub as she empties the contents of her stomach. “I didn’t even see you drinking.” 

“I didn’t,” Rey says once she trusts herself to speak. “Must still be from yesterday. Ben made steak. I thought I was over it, but apparently I’m not. Why are you in the bathtub?” 

“ _I_ was drinking,” Finn reminds her mournfully. “Jess kept daring me to do shots.” 

Rey rinses out her mouth and glances at Finn, who has passed out again. They’ve been out of college for a few years now, but in moments like this, it’s like they’re 21 again. Part of her is overcome by this almost compulsive need to find a marker and draw a dick on Finn’s face. 

She raids Finn and Poe’s fridge instead, frying eggs and bacon and texting Ben to come over. Finding flats that are only two blocks apart had been a coincidence, but a lucky one. Rey hangs out here all the time, and in situations like this, it’s even more convenient, because Ben rings the doorbell just when the food is done. 

Poe emerges from his bedroom, woken either from the shrill sound of the doorbell or from the smell of bacon, his eyes bloodshot. “Finn?” he grunts, wincing at the sound of his own voice. 

“Bathtub,” Rey says and hands him a plate, which Poe takes, stares at, and then retreats back to the bedroom with, evidently not awake enough for people yet. He’s back out before Rey is finished preparing Ben’s plate (just eggs), demanding, “What do you mean, bathtub? Is he dead?” 

“He’s asleep,” Rey says. She doesn’t mention that the reason she knows Finn isn’t dead is that she had a conversation with him in between being violently sick. “Are you going to have breakfast with us or are you going back to sleep?” 

Poe appears to be seriously considering the question. “Breakfast,” he eventually says, retrieves his plate from his room, and sits down next to Ben, seemingly only just now noticing that Rey isn’t the only guest in his apartment. “Ben? Am I hallucinating? Tell me I’m not hallucinating. Why are you here?” 

“You’re hallucinating,” Ben says flatly. He’s already halfway finished with his meal. Ben is the only person Rey has ever met who eats more than she does. 

“I invited him over,” Rey says and finally joins them at the table. Finn and Poe only own two plates, so she’s just added the bacon to the eggs and taken the whole pan with her. 

Poe nods, accepting this, and exchanges some sort of complicated fist bump with Ben. When asked about this, neither of the men will explain how it happened that Ben, who doesn’t like to be touched and thinks pats on the shoulder are excessive, and Poe, who prefers hugging to speaking, developed their own fist bump. A lot of things don’t make sense about their friendship, but Rey knows that nothing pisses Finn off more than this. 

“How was the party?” Ben asks now. 

“Fun,” says Rey. 

“We missed you,” says Poe. 

“I’m dying,” says Finn. 

All heads turn to him standing in the doorway. Finn does, indeed, look like he’s dying. Apparently it’s not that serious, though, because what had previously been an expression of agony now turns into an expression of betrayed outrage as he realises that there’s no more food. “You,” he says gravely, managing to complete the act of Putting Cereal and Milk in a Bowl in a very accusing manner, “are a bunch of assholes. Hey, what’s he doing here?” He points a spoon at Ben and accidentally ends up flinging a few lucky charms at him. Or maybe not so accidentally. 

“We invited him,” Poe says with the sunny confidence of a man who just lied for no reason other than to try and make Finn warm up to Ben. Little does he know that the reason Finn hasn’t warmed up to Ben is that Ben refuses to warm up to Finn. “The gang having breakfast together!” 

“The gang and Ben?” Finn asks sourly. 

“That could be our band name,” Poe says. “The gang and Ben, live in your theatres May 25th.” 

“Are we a band or a movie in this scenario?” asks Rey, amused. 

“We’re both,” Poe says cheerfully. 

The gang and Ben have breakfast, and then Rey says goodbye to her co-stars-slash-bandmates to go have ice cream with Ben. It took them one year of trying out ice cream parlours in the neighbourhood until they found their favourite one: Ice House has robot servers, plays Bach, and makes sundaes that are shaped like famous buildings. Nothing about it makes sense, which is precisely why Rey likes it. 

Ben, mostly, just likes the owner’s cat and the way it cuddles up on his lap every time without fail. Today is no different: They manage to procure one of the popular tables outside the café, give their order to the cute robot that has absolutely replaced human servers and that’s Wrong, but that is also honestly just about the most adorable thing Rey has ever seen in her life, and within seconds a large orange ball of fluff lands on Ben’s lap. Ben immediately starts petting it, eyebrows knitted together, as focused on this task as he is on any. The cat doesn’t seem to mind, just like Ben never minds that this way he’ll get lots of tiny hairs all over his clothes. 

Rey takes a picture of them and takes one of the Eiffel tower-sundae too when it arrives. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says to Ben, eating a mouthful of strawberry ice cream. “It’s not like I’m posting it on Instagram.” 

Ben is a food blogger. He’s also a business consultant, but no tearing down managers will ever bring him as much joy as taking perfectly symmetrical photos of his goat cheese and beet salad. Apparently these pictures appeal to a lot of people, because he’s got over 200k followers on Instagram. And that’s _after_ he took down all those shirtless pictures he uploaded in college. 

His weird internet fame also means that he has now an image to retain. Not anything crazy – it’s not like people recognise him on the street. But his followers know him as That Guy Who Eats Healthy Food, and Ben has asked Rey not to tag him in pictures that show the two of them consuming food that’s got, like, more than 300 calories. (He didn’t say it like that, but that was the essence. Rey has yet to stop finding this funny.) 

They eat the entire sundae until only a piece of pineapple is left. Rey takes it without thinking and has just taken a bite when she sees Ben looking at her. “Sorry, did you want that?” 

“Since when do you like pineapple?” Ben says. 

“I’ve always liked pineapple.” 

“You refused to eat even one bite of my fruit salad last summer because you said the pineapple contaminated the rest of it.” 

“So I changed my mind,” Rey says, weirdly annoyed by this. “Aren’t I allowed to change my mind now?” 

“Of course you are,” Ben says, and for a moment, he’s too busy to scratch the cafés cat to meet her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he adds after a few seconds. 

Rey sighs. “Me too. I didn’t mean to bite your head off.” 

“It’s fine,” Ben says and the thing is, Rey knows that it’s fine, knows that he won’t hold this against her. But she also knows her boyfriend, knows that he might lie awake tonight thinking about it. So she reaches across the table to take the hand that’s not busy petting a shaggy cat. 

“I love you,” Rey says. “Thanks for treating me to ice cream.” 

“Thanks for not forcing me to socialise,” Ben says seriously, but there’s a twinkle in his eye that betrays the words. Rey wouldn’t have it any other way.

***

A few weeks have passed by the time Ben’s birthday is rolling around. A stifling heat overtakes the city at around the same time and leaves everyone desperate for rooms with functioning air conditioning – which, luckily, poses no problem in America, Rey has learned. 

It’s so hot that even Ben has taken to wearing shorts and t-shirts at home, the sight of which never fails to amuse Rey. Rey has stopped running in the evenings and instead gets up an hour earlier each day to do it in the mornings before the temperature really goes up, and Ben stops running altogether and goes to the pool after work now, swimming round after round until Rey comes to pick him up. They walk home together, or to that 24 hour waffle house that Rey loves, or to Finn and Poe’s place, falling into their usual summer routine that includes making plans for Ben’s birthday. 

Poe knew Ben before any of them and Rey knows the story of how he found out about his college roommate-slash-best friend’s birthday by heart; after all, Poe tells it every year. He’d come into their dorm room one day just in time to run into a delivery guy, who’d been sent to their address with a box from a popular bakery. Poe had accepted the box, tipped the delivery man, and had left it on Bed’s bed for all of twenty seconds before lifting the lid and finding – a cake with a teenaged Ben’s surly face on it and the words “HAPPY BIRTHDAY XXX” written in a circle of pink icing. 

Some undefinable time later Ben had entered the room to see Poe on his bed, already on his second slice, uttering the words Ben had hoped to avoid by moving ten hours away from his childhood home: “Happy birthday.” 

Then they had gone to the zoo. Ten birthdays later, they still do, and for the past few years, both Rey and Finn have joined. Rey used to get jealous at other people’s traditions. Now that she has her own, though, she finds that she doesn’t mind participating in the ones of others.

And Poe and Ben’s birthday tradition is more fun than most: It usually involves smuggling booze into the zoo and then playing everyone’s favourite game of Find the Animal that Looks Most Like Ben. 

“I found one,” Poe says, and everyone turns to follow his outstretched arm, which is pointing at a meercat. “Twins. Identical twins. Let’s get a photo of these guys. Ben, get over there.”

“I hate you so much,” Ben says, but dutifully wanders over to the cage so Poe can snap a picture. Poe joins him once the photo is done and throws a casual arm over Ben’s shoulders as they walk to the next cage, clearly already in the middle of an explanation of something that involves a lot of pointing. 

Rey lets herself fall back a little and ends up at Finn’s side. They continue on in silence for a while, watching their boyfriends get into a heated debate over something. 

“These two,” Finn says, shaking his head. “Unbelievable.” He holds out his beer to her and Rey takes it automatically, the whole gesture perfected after performing it hundreds of times in college. She doesn’t get past a single sip though, spitting it out immediately. 

“This is gross,” she declares, wiping her mouth. “I’m so grossed out.” 

Handing back the bottle, she notices that Finn is watching her intently. “You didn’t like that wine we got last week either,” he says. 

Rey mentally backtracks to their Mario Kart night the week before. She and Ben had been in charge of buying wine, because apparently Rey and Finn in their late twenties and Poe and Ben in their early thirties means they’re officially behaving like adults now, and they’d spent ages arguing in the store over which brand to buy – a fruitless argument, it turned out, as Rey later realised that the wine she’d so insistently fought for was really, really disgusting. A week later, Ben is still smug. 

“I guess not,” Rey says. They stop because Ben and Poe have stopped a few metres away in front of the ape habitat. Poe is currently in the middle of imitating the way a monkey is scratching his ass. 

“ _And_ ,” Finn says, “you’re eating mint-flavoured ice cream right now even though you don’t like it.” He says it in a weird way, like he's making a point, and just waiting for her to realise it. Rey _hates_ when he does that. 

“Ben was handing out the cones,” she says. “He confused my strawberry ice cream with Poe’s mint ice cream. We didn’t tell him because he always gets so embarrassed.” 

Once early into their living together, Rey got them new toothbrushes from the store, one in blue for her and one in purple for Ben. At the time Ben hadn’t said anything, but she still remembers catching him over and over again using the wrong brush, until finally, he’d put one of her hair ties around it. In retrospect, the colour-blind thing really shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Rey. 

“How’s your nausea?” Finn asks slyly. 

“Just gone up by a million,” Rey says, pointing at where Poe has jumped on Ben’s back for a piggyback ride. “When I wanted him to carry _me_ like that because I was too drunk to walk, he refused.” 

“I know, I was there,” Finn says, a look of revulsion on his face. “He bridal-carried you instead.” 

Rey, who had been hoping to not bring up the second part of the story, changes the subject, her cheeks heating up. “We’re exchanging presents in a bit, right? Tell me you didn’t get Ben another Rubik’s cube.” 

“Of course not, that joke only worked once,” Finn says, and adds, “I got him a Lego set.” 

“Oh. Huh. He might actually like that.” 

“It’s really more for you than for me,” says Finn, and doesn’t even wait for Rey to ask why before saying, “because I was thinking, what better way to distract Ben than tossing a pile of small items in front of him? He'll be physically unable to leave it alone until it's all neatly organised and in its place.” 

Finn is still laughing when Rey shoves her ice cream cone in his face.

***

Ben has just left on a business trip when it happens. He’s used to travelling for his work; while he does a lot of his consultation for local businesses or from home, every once in a while he leaves for a few weeks. This one is just going to be a short trip, one week tops, he’s assured her, and Rey planned to use his absence to finish some work projects of her own that will require a bunch of all-nighters. She’s got it all worked out, she’s made spreadsheets, she’s assembled a timeline and a plan that will lead her to success – if it weren’t for the fact that, the morning after Ben has caught his flight yesterday evening, she can’t get out of bed. It’s like her bones are made of lead suddenly, and even calling the lab and telling Bodhi that she’s very sorry, but she has to call in sick, takes way more effort than it should. 

Rey spends the day drifting in and out of a light sleep. At some point she manages to move from the bed to the couch, feeling kind of like she’s been hit by a truck, and when she attempts to eat a bit of the vegetable stew they had for lunch yesterday, she finds that her nausea has returned full force. 

Her phone ringing cuts into the episode of Friends. Rey mutes Chandler’s monologue and answers without looking at the screen, since there’s no need: She knows who it is. 

“Everyone here is a moron,” Ben says in lieu of a greeting. “I miss you.” 

“I miss you, too,” Rey says, trying to keep her tone light. “Have you killed anyone yet?” 

“No,” Ben says. He sounds surly about it. There’s some sort of background noise, muffled voices, music- 

“Are you at a bar?” Rey asks, probably more taken aback by this than she should be. In the past, Ben has called her from hotel rooms, on trains, in bathroom cubicles when everyone at work was behaving so stupidly that he needed to rant, and in the middle of business meetings when everyone at work was behaving so stupidly that he needed to rant and wanted them to _know_. Never a bar, though. Has society finally driven him to drink? 

“Under duress,” says Ben, but unconvincingly. Now that she’s paying attention, Rey thinks she can make out some laughter, and someone shouting, _Get back here, Solo_. “I was dragged along.” 

He probably was, but Rey doesn’t think he minds. This is another thing it took her way too long to figure out: Ben isn’t great at socialising, and most of the time he despises it with a passion, but sometimes, he enjoys it more than he would ever admit. It’s why Rey lets him get away with skipping parties, but not with smaller group outings. 

“Well, have fun,” she says now, meaning it. She might have the flu or a fatal disease or something, but Ben doesn’t need to know that. If he has decided that one night spent drinking with colleagues won’t hurt his image of coldblooded capitalist scum, then he deserves not to have it ruined with worry. “You sound like you’re busy, so we can just talk tomorrow, alright?” 

“If you’re sure,” Ben says slowly. “I love you.” Rey is smiling when she replies, “I’m sure. I love you too.” 

They hang up, and Rey promptly spends the next few minutes retching, and then the hour after that just crying for absolutely no reason beside the fact that she feels awful and everything hurts and no one will ever love her and also she discovered that there is no more soy milk in the fridge.

***

So the good news is that Rey is probably not dying. 

It took another day of intense fatigue until she finally caved and did what has never done anyone any good ever: She googled her symptoms. 

So either she’s suffering from an acute case of Addison’s disease, or- 

Or she’s pregnant. 

She really, really doesn’t think it’s Addison’s disease. 

Rey doesn’t call Ben. She thinks about calling Poe or Finn. 

She doesn’t. 

She goes to the drugstore alone. She’s alone when she buys the test, alone when she walks home, alone when she anxiously counts down from 120 seconds. 

She’s alone when she looks down and sees the clear blue strip. 

Suddenly it occurs to her that she hasn’t been alone for quite a while now.

***  
“I know this isn’t the best time,” is the first thing Finn says as soon as he’s here, “but I would just like to say that _I knew it_. I’ve known for weeks. All the signs, and I kept waiting for you to notice, and _I fucking knew it.”_

“Are you done?” Rey asks. Jesus, she needs wine for this conversation. Except that she can’t have wine. Not for the next eight-or-so months. “Because if you’re done, maybe we can get back to like- this whole thing.”

She awkwardly points at her belly. She checked it in the bathroom mirror earlier while waiting for Finn to arrive, and was mildly disappointed to find it entirely flat still. There’s also not been a notable glow about her, nor are her breasts any bigger. Funny how she’s only known about this pregnancy for like, an hour, and it’s already giving her insecurities about not being pregnant enough. 

“Can I touch it?” Finn asks eagerly. Rey frowns at him. 

“Sure, but you won’t feel anything. At all.” 

“Awesome,” Finn says and puts a hand to her stomach. “This is _so_ awesome,” he repeats. “I feel like we’re bonding already. I’m going to buy it so many toys. I’m going to teach it how to ride a bike, too, because I’m calling dibs, and Ben needs to honour my dibs, so- oh no, why are you crying?” 

Rey hadn’t noticed, but now that she puts a hand to her face, she finds that it comes back wet. Huh. 

“Ben can totally teach it how to ride a bike,” Finn says quickly. “I was just joking. Or you can do the bike ride teachings. I’m sure you’ll be great at it. Or-“ He pauses, and continues uncertainly, “am I reading this wrong? I can drive you to the clinic tomorrow, if you want to-“ He makes a weird motion with his hands. Rey stares at him. Finn mimics cutting his own throat. 

“Oh! No. No, no. There won’t be any-“ Rey also mimics cutting her own throat. 

“Oh. Good. So, if you’re not crying because of that, then why are you crying?” 

“I don’t know,” Rey says, and the weird thing is that she doesn’t feel like she’s crying, but she knows there’s tears streaming down her face now, and the whole thing is so horribly awkward that she wants to die. Only not literally, because if she dies, this little life inside her dies, and that thought makes her cry harder. 

Finn’s arms are around her suddenly, hugging her tightly to his chest, stroking her hair, not saying anything while she’s probably getting tears and snot on his t-shirt, and they just stand like this until Rey has calmed down. 

“I think,” Finn says once she’s done, “you should call Ben.” 

Rey wipes her eyes with the hem of her top and says, her voice still a little shaky, “I’m not telling him over the phone.” 

“Tell him he needs to come home, then. Tell him you need to talk.” 

“I’m not telling him we _need to talk_. He’ll think I’m breaking up with him.” 

“Are you?” Finn asks bluntly, startling Rey. He asks it without judgement, like he doesn’t care either way, and somehow, that makes Rey surer in her reply. 

“No.” 

“Okay. So, tell him that. Say that he needs to come home, and it’s not a break-up. And do it now, before you chicken out.” 

Rey considers this. Then she takes out her phone.

***

_Ben thinks you’re breaking up with him  
_

Poe’s text arrives the next morning, which either means that Ben waited several hours to tell him, or that he spilled the beans immediately but Poe forgot. Whatever it is, it makes a strong sense of guilt wash over Rey, even though she plans to do no such thing. 

_I told him I wasn’t going to_ , she texts back. She did tell him that. Three times. Which, in retrospect, might have made it worse. But Rey had been so nervous, so worried that he’d somehow be able to just tell from her voice that she’s pregnant, that it’s practically a miracle she managed to tell him to come home. 

Not that he argued. They have their fair share of arguments, both equally stubborn, but Rey thinks that when it comes to important things, things like her asking Ben to _please come home_ , they’ll do it every time, no questions asked. 

So Ben hadn’t said anything except, “I’m booking a flight right now.” Then, with just the barest hint of hesitation, he’d said, “I love you.”

And for perhaps the first time, he’d hung up without waiting for her to say it back. 

Now, Rey wonders if he didn’t wait because he wasn’t sure of what she’d reply. 

Her phone buzzes a couple more times: Poe. Rey forces herself not to check the messages, and when Poe calls, she doesn’t answer. It’s just today, she tells herself. She doesn’t want to explain the situation to Poe – the _situation_ , Jesus – before she explains it to Ben, and the thing is. The thing is, if she did tell Poe, he’d be very understanding, he’d ask if she wants him to come over, and when she said no, he’d come over anyway, just to be sure she’s alright, just to be sure she doesn’t need anything. 

But before he’d do any of that, he’d call Ben. This isn’t even up for debate. 

And Rey just can’t handle that right now. So she ignores the texts, and doesn’t call back, and instead makes a doctor’s appointment for the following week, cooks Ben’s favourite dish, paints her toe nails. 

Mostly, she waits.

***

When someone knocks, Rey assumes that Poe has finally gotten impatient enough to check for himself if she’s still alive, or sent Finn over to do it for him, and she opens the door prepared to apologise. 

It’s not Finn or Poe. 

It’s Ben. 

“Why did you knock?” Rey asks, blurting out the first thing that comes to mind. It’s around noon, so Ben must have caught a really early flight to get here this quickly. Now that he’s here, actually in front of her, it’s like every muscle in her body has tensed up. 

“I wasn’t sure you wanted me here,” Ben says, which doesn’t make sense because Rey was the one who asked him to come home four days early. The words sound an awful lot like _I wasn’t sure you wanted me_ , though, so Rey kisses him, right there on the doorstep.

Ben makes a small noise, like a sigh of relief, and kisses back like a starving man. Rey mutters things like, _I’m sorry_ , and _Of course I want you_ , and _I love you_ , and in between kisses, all that Ben says is, _I love you_ , over and over again, _I love you, I love you, I love you_. He picks her up at some point, carrying her to the couch, then changing his mind and carrying her to the bedroom instead, and normally Rey would protest, but right now she’s floating. “I love you,” Ben says once more, keeping her wrists pinned to the headrest. 

Rey doesn’t say it back. Rey says, “Show me.” 

So he does.

***

Afterwards, they take a shower, and they heat up some of the stew Rey made earlier, and they eat it in silence while an episode of Gossip Girl is playing in the background, and it’s all very uncomfortable. Ben keeps glancing at her from the side, his eyes nervously darting towards her every thirty seconds or so, and Rey knows that despite everything, Ben is still worried. 

She also knows that it’s on her to ease his mind. If only it weren’t for the fact that she’s still not sure if what she has to tell him _will_ ease his mind. 

“Rey,” Ben says finally, obviously unable to take the silence any longer. Sometimes he says her name like a caress. Sometimes he says her name like a declaration. Today, he says it like a death sentence. 

Suddenly, Rey can’t take this anymore, either. “I made a doctor’s appointment,” she says. Ben stills, swallows heavily. 

“Okay.” 

“It’s- alright, remember a few weeks ago, when you made me steak and I spent the next two days throwing up? Turns out that wasn’t your fault. Or, well. I suppose it kind of was.” 

“Rey,” Ben says again. He sounds like – Rey doesn’t know what he sounds like. “If you’re dying, this really isn’t a great time for jokes, and I don’t appreciate you-“ 

“What? I’m not dying,” Rey says, perhaps a bit too judgementally, considering that yesterday, she kind of thought she was dying, too. 

Ben frowns. “You’re not?” 

“No! I’m – Ben. I’m pregnant.”

He stares at her. A second passes, then another one. Rey hates this. She should have told him over the phone. She should have told him before they had sex. She should have told him over lunch. She should have packed her bags and left, because this is _unbearable_. 

And then, just when she’s about to laugh it off and change her name and move to France or something, something strange happens. 

He smiles. 

“Thank god,” Ben says. “I’m so glad.” 

“You are?” Rey asks, unable to keep her voice from hitching a little. It’s not like she thought Ben would break up with her but – she doesn’t know what she thought. 

“Of course I am,” Ben says. He’s still smiling, possibly he hasn’t smiled this widely since she first told him she loved him. He reaches out to touch her, then stops, waiting for permission. Rey nods, and he places a large hand on her belly, just like Finn had done yesterday.

Of course he can’t feel anything, there is absolutely no way anyone will be able to feel or even see anything for the next few months at least, Rey really doesn’t get why no one seems to be able to understand this, but right now, she doesn’t mind. She just watches her boyfriend, trying and definitely failing to establish any kind of connection with her child, with his child, with _their_ child, and even the absolute lack of movement under her skin doesn’t deter him, doesn’t diminish his smile even a little. 

“This will change our lives,” Rey says at last, because she’s physically incapable of not ruining nice moments. “This will change everything. We’ll never go back from this.” 

“Good,” Ben says, finally taking his hand away and sort of cradling her face instead. 

“I mean it,” Rey warns. “Babies need food, and clothes, they cost so much money, and then it never stops, we’ll worry about kindergarten and school and if our kid has enough friends and eats enough vegetables, and we’ll literally _never stop worrying until we die_.” 

“Rey,” Ben says. This time, it sounds like a promise. “I want this. I’m ready for it. It’s okay if you’re not. We’ll do whatever you want. But I’m ready.” 

“Me, too,” Rey says. Her eyes are filling with tears again. She’s cried more in the last few days than she has in the past year. “I just need you to be sure. Like, really really sure.” 

She doesn’t say why, but she doesn’t need to. Ben knows. 

“I’m sure,” he says. 

Rey smiles.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> I might write a prologue to this, BUT this concludes the main story. Thank you for reading !


End file.
